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Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags

Thursday - 10/24/2013, 8:28am EDT

JACK GILLUM
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Crammed into conference rooms with pizza for dinner, some
programmers building the Obama administration's showcase health insurance website
were growing increasingly stressed. Some worked past 10 p.m., energy drinks in
hand. Others rewrote computer code over and over to meet what they considered
last-minute requests for changes from the government or other contractors.

As questions mount over the website's failure, insider interviews and a review
of technical specifications by The Associated Press found a mind-numbingly complex
system put together by harried programmers who pushed out a final product that
congressional investigators said was tested by the government and not private
developers with more expertise.

Meanwhile, the White House said that
President Barack Obama's longtime adviser Jeffrey Zients will provide management
advice to help fix the system. White House press secretary Jay Carney says Zients
will be on a short-term assignment at the Health and Human Services Department
before he's due to take over as director of Obama's National Economic Council Jan.
1.

Carney cited Zients' expertise as a longtime management consultant and
his "proven track record" since coming to the White House in 2009, both as interim
budget director and as chief performance officer, when he headed an effort to
streamline government and cut costs. "We're engaged in an all-out effort to
improve the online experience," Carney said.

This is not the first time
Obama has turned to Zients for help solving a major problem. In the 2009, after
far more drivers than anticipated signed up for the Cash for Clunkers program that
promised rebates to people who traded in their old cars for more fuel-efficient
vehicles, Obama assigned Zients, his deputy budget director at the time, to help
eliminate the backlog.

When the same thing happened with sign-ups for an
updated version of the GI Bill, one designed to help the 9/11 generation of
veterans get a college education, Obama again turned to Zients.

"He's not
going to be looking under the hood and tell you 'I can fix the coding, I can fix
it,'" Kenneth Baer, who was a senior adviser to Zients at the budget office, said
of Zients' newest assignment. "His skill is going to be how to identify
challenges, prioritize what solutions need to be done next, assessing what talent
is already available and then how to motivate them to do that job as quickly and
as ably as possible."

Aneesh Chopra, who was Obama's chief technology
officer, said Zients is extremely skilled in figuring things out from a management
perspective.

"If I was confident this issue would be resolved before his
participation, I am doubly so now," said Chopra, who also worked with Zients at
the Advisory Board Co., one of two business advisory firms where Zients held top
posts. "Jeff's track record is really a relentless focus on execution."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a post on
HealthCare.gov that her agency is also bringing in more experts and specialists
from government and industry, including top Silicon Valley companies.

"This
new infusion of talent will bring a powerful array of subject matter expertise and
skills, including extensive experience scaling major IT systems," she said. "This
effort is being marshaled as part of a cross-functional team that is working
aggressively to diagnose parts of HealthCare.gov that are experiencing problems,
learn from successful states, prioritize issues, and fix them."

Project
developers for the health care website who spoke to the AP on condition of
anonymity -- because they feared they would otherwise be fired -- said they raised
doubts among themselves whether the website could be ready in time. They
complained openly to each other about what they considered tight and unrealistic
deadlines. One was nearly brought to tears over the stress of finishing on time,
one developer said. Website builders saw red flags for months.

A review of
internal architectural diagrams obtained by the AP revealed the system's
complexity. Insurance applicants have a host of personal information verified,
including income and immigration status. The system connects to other federal
computer networks, including ones at the Social Security Administration, IRS,
Veterans Administration, Office of Personnel Management and the Peace Corps.

Obama on Monday acknowledged technical problems that he described as "kinks in
the system." But in remarks at a Rose Garden event, Obama offered no explanation
for the failure except to note that high traffic to the website caused some of the
slowdowns. He said it had been visited nearly 20 million times -- fewer monthly
visits so far than many commercial websites, such as PayPal, AOL, Wikipedia or
Pinterest.